Elbert "Peewee" Claybrook

Born Elbert Claybrook, this saxophonist was for the most part a well kept secret of the San Francisco swing jazz scene. That area's Napa Valley Jazz Festival even established a "Pee Wee Claybrook Award" for contributions to jazz, but Claybrook himself was only heard by an international jazz record audience thanks to collaborations with trumpeter Clark Terry, who just happens to be an old Navy buddy. Terry was taking the law into his own hands, so to speak, by directly making sure that this fine musician would finally get some of his tenor saxophone playing preserved for posterity. For Claybrook it had been a lifetime of swinging, but never in front of studio recording microphones. The resulting Reunion CD and other projects involving the Swing Fever band were beginning to bring more extensive notoriety Claybrook's way, but nobody was too surprised that the saxophonist wasn't around long enough to appreciate it. He was 84 when Reunion was recorded, and died the following year. Claybrook had performed frequently at the aforementioned Napa Valley festival, but this was unfortunately one of the only area programs that truly attempted to present a representative sampling of San Francisco jazz talent in its programs. Furthermore, the '40s swing style that Claybrook specialized in was often pushed aside by booking dictators in favor of the flavor of the day, be it fusion jazz or cool west coast jazz. The lowered status of swing even in 1995, the dawn of a revival in that genre, might even be determined by the fact that the Reunion show with Terry had to play in the suburb of Emeryville. The pair's relationship began in the swing era as well, where they gigged together on the St. Louis scene, then in a wartime Navy band. They went their seperate ways after the second...